i think that this is also related to my father's seminar. the last paper i had to write for him was on four of Freud's essays in his book "Therapy and Technique". The four essays were entitled "The Dynamics of the Transference", "Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: Recollection, Repetition and Working Through", "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" and "Constructions in Analysis". fhe first time ever really, when reading freud, i had a few problems with these essays. i just "didn't buy it". the points that i took issue with were the following:

freud stated stated that "all the feelings of sympathy, friendship, trust and so forth which we expend in life are genetically connected with sexuality and have developed out of purely sexual desires by an enfeebling of their sexual aim" (Therapy and Technique, p.112). this remine f something that Prof. Davis said in class - that most teacher-student relationships have some degree of sexual energy, safe with the knowledge that neither party will act on such feelings. i'm just not sure how i feel about all of this. freud also stated that "psychoanalysis shows us that those persons whom in real life we merely respect or are fond of may be sexual objects to us in our unconscious minds still" (T & T, p.112). thats just really creepy. i am tempted to say, um...no! but then this is where my other problem with his essays comes in:

in his essay "Constructions in Analysis", he discusses an issue raised by a colleague, that "if the patient agrees with us, then the interpretation is right; but if he contradicts us, that is only a sign of his resistance, which again shows that we are right" (T & T, p.273). he called this the "Heads I win, tails you lose" principle. his essay addresses this issue, and attempts to state that he does indeed listen to the patients' impressions of *his* impressions . . . but does admit that often, they are not placed in the number one priority slot. so, with this principle in mind, by saying "um...no!", am i merely repressing some deep-rooted sexual desires toward all of my friends, all of my professors, all of my acquaintances? i would truly like to think not. but freud really just doesn't seem to let that slide.

anyway - where this is going -- in class, i had been typecast as the freudian, the one who defended the poor man in his most desperate theories (desperate in the other students' eyes, not my own). i really held out for the guy. but on this particular day, i just couldn't. and i basically tried to tear his theories apart that day. and i think that i felt a little surprised by that. and it shook me up a little, because i had always thought that i really did agree with most of freud's theories. i suppose until it hit too close to home . . . in which case, wouldn't that just be me supporting his theories nonetheless? if i offered such strong resistance that day, with regards to these issues, doesn't that mean that these are the very theories which are the most true to life? oh, gosh. i don't know. it's all too intricate for me to even begin to try to analyze. anyway, these are my thoughts on that part of the dream.